A $6.87 25 Foot 5
Band HF Vertical"The
Wonder Stick"A good
working hf vertical for the price of a hamburger and
fries!

by
N5VEG

I like to experiment with
antennas and have built many dipoles for the various bands. I have a
commercial vertical and like it but I wanted to try to build a smaller,
simpler light weight vertical for multiple bands.

I came up with what I
call the "Wonder Stick" antenna!

The Wonder Stick is
composed entirely of schedule 20 PVC pipe and a piece of copper-weld 12
gauge wire.

I purchased 3 different
sized white PVC pipes at 1", 3/4" and 1/2" in 10Ft. lengths.(each
length was $1.97 plus a 1/2" end cap for .37 cents. (the rest was
tax)

I already had the
copper-weld wire and 3 bolts to drill and secure the sections. I shoved
the copper wire down each of the lengths separately then tied them
together equally to an overall length of 25 feet. I left about 18" pigtail
of copper wire through a 1/2" hole drilled 1 foot from the bottom of the
1" pipe. Once bolted together and in one 25 foot piece, I walked it over
to a 3 foot PVC pipe I had hammered in the ground on the side of my house.
After it was erected on the pipe mount, I connected the shield to my
pre-existing radial system and the center connector to the copper wire
through a large dirty balun choke coil to the tuner.

Note that choke coil
"Ugly Balun" not shown.

I used
my 857D with LDG Z100+ autotuner to push the signal and it was
able to tune it pretty much flat on 10,12,15,17 and 40 meters. (20M
didn't tune as well except at higher end of band.) I made numerous
contacts today on 12,15 and 17 meters in the U.S. and Mexico all
with 5-9 RST's! Javier in Mexico said I had a strong 5-9
signal!

"Ugly Balun" shown at the feedpoint in photo
above.

Antenna
farm on left.

I have
about 16 radials out plus a 30' X 5' wire mesh buried under the grass
beneath the antenna. Although this unit does well with just
2-31' radials, I built one for an neighbor ham and he has just the two
radials. We have no trouble making contacts in California and
Canada from New Orleans.

So, if you are on a budget or just
want to build a really good working 5 band hf vertical for the price
of a burger and fries, try the Wonder Stick!Don't forget the ketchup for those friesand tip the
waiter!

Questions? Email the authorr_bosio AT
bellsouth.net

Article edited
and used with permission of the author from the original seen on
eHam.net